1. Technical Field
The invention relates generally to material handling systems, and particularly to palletizers for arranging articles on a pallet.
2. Related Prior Art
A palletizer is operable to arrange objects, such as beverage containers, into an organized pattern and place the objects onto a pallet. It is known to provide such palletizers with a container conveyor assembly for conducting a stream of containers. It is also known to provide a palletizer with "pattern-forming" apparatus to organize the conveyed objects into a pattern. U.S. Pat. No. 4,834,605, which issued to Jerred and which is titled "Apparatus for Palletizing Layers of Circular Containers Arranged in a Honeycomb Pattern", discloses one known apparatus for arranging a stream of generally circular containers on a conveyor into a "voidless" arrangement of nested, parallel rows of containers.
It is also generally known to provide a palletizer with apparatus to accumulate a portion of the stream of conveyed containers and to move the portion of the stream containers from the stream of conveyors onto a pallet. An example of such an accumulation and sweep assembly is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,271,709 which issued to VanderMeer et al. on Dec. 21, 1993 and which is titled "Device and Method for Repeatedly Forming a Preselected Arrangement of Conveyed Articles". It is also known to provide a palletizer with a pallet dispenser, a separator sheet dispenser and a main hoist for holding a pallet in a position to receive multiple tiers of containers and separator sheets.